


How To Say I Love you in Subtext

by RhapsodyInProgress



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29199468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhapsodyInProgress/pseuds/RhapsodyInProgress
Summary: If you know where to look and what to listen for, Josh and Donna have been telling each other how they feel for years. A series of vignettes on a theme. J/D obvs
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 52
Kudos: 146





	How To Say I Love you in Subtext

**sub·text**

/ˈsəbˌtekst/

_noun_

  1. an underlying and often distinct theme in a piece of writing or conversation.
  2. a hidden or less obvious meaning



**~**

When Josh Lyman smiles at her for the first time – properly smiles, not that bemused smirking thing he’s been doing since he first found her answering his phone calls – Donna thinks it’s like watching the sun come up. She is vaguely aware that this is a ridiculous, romantic, probably inappropriate thing to think about the person that’s been her boss for what feels like approximately fifteen minutes, but her mind persists in thinking it.

Donna hadn’t had the slightest idea what Josh Lyman looked like when she’d arrived here, let alone that he had a smile like that. She’d just walked towards the sound of the nearest ringing phone, asked whose office that was and decided to make that office the place she worked, even if she was going to have to spend the next week convincing the occupant she wasn’t a crazy person. Because when you’ve packed the shambles of your life into two suitcases, moved across country and bluffed your way into a presidential campaign, convincing people you aren’t a crazy person seems less daunting than one might suppose.

But it hadn’t taken a week. It hadn’t even taken an hour. In the time it took for the pair of them to do a lap around the campaign headquarters, Donna somehow managed to talk Josh into giving her a chance and now it’s the end of the day and she doesn’t really want to leave. She feels, for the first time in months, _alive_.

“You know it’s nearly midnight, right?”

“Yes,” Donna halts at the entrance to Josh’s office. She’s spent the last hour organizing herself a workspace just outside his door.

Josh gives her that same bemused look he’s been giving her all day, “You should go get some sleep. The hours around here aren’t getting shorter any time soon,”

“Okay,” She feels like maybe she should offer to stay until Josh leaves, the way Mr. McGarry’s assistant seems to have done, but Donna doesn’t want to push her luck until she’s figured him out a bit better. She touches the Bartlet for America badge hanging around her neck, the one that used to be Josh’s, “Do you need this back or…”

“Keep it,” Josh tells her, “I can get a new one,”

Donna beams, clutches the badge in both hands, “Thanks. Thank you,” she says, meaning much, much more than those two words convey. Donna looks down at the badge, back up at Josh and blurts without really thinking, “Would it be super weird if I framed this? I think I want to frame this,”

And there’s the smile. The first proper smile.

Just like the sun coming up.

And that’s how it starts.

**~**

“Josh? Do you need anything else?” Donna asks quietly. Despite Governor Bartlet’s health scare earlier in the day, the third debate went well, but not quite as well as they’d hoped it would and though there had been some celebration after, it had been low key and over quickly. The election is going to be close, too close and the prevailing opinion seemed to be rest while you can. At this hour, headquarters is nearly deserted, and most of the lights are off. For some reason this makes Donna feel like she needs to keep her voice down.

Josh notices, “Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t know,” Donna answers truthfully. She half shrugs, “It feels… weird. Around here,”

“Yeah,” Josh rubs both hands over his face then through his hair, making it stick up in all directions, “It’s, uh… it was a weird day,” he gives her beleaguered half-smile, “You can go if you want,”

Donna hesitates. She’s exhausted, desperately wants to climb into bed and sleep for twenty years, but she’s not sure if she should leave. He looks pinched and pale, not like his normal self, and Donna wonders if it would be better if she stuck around, “Are you feeling okay?”

Josh looks bemused, “Wow, do I look that bad?”

“No,” Donna says, drawing the word out the way she’s started catching herself doing when she thinks he’s being obtuse, “But something’s going around. The Governor collapsed,”

Josh winces, cracks his neck to one side, “Yeah he’s got… I don’t know, an inner ear… Mrs. Bartlet said it was an inner ear thing,” he waggles his fingers beside his own ear to illustrate the point, “I’m pretty sure those aren’t contagious,”

“Mr. McGarry’s not feeling well either,” Donna says, forgetting, in her weariness, that she’s allowed to call him Leo now, “No one said so, but I could tell, and if both he _and_ the Governor are sick…”

Something in Josh’s face slams closed. It’s so dramatic that Donna takes a step away from his desk, as though Josh has just physically shunted her backwards. “Leo’s fine,” he says, voice sharp and too fast, “He’s just tired,”

“Okay,” Donna genuinely likes everyone she works with, the whole team, but she’s especially fond of Leo McGarry, who has never gotten her name wrong, and calls her ‘kid’ in a way that makes her want to call her dad. Leo was so good when Josh’s own dad died, he was such a rock for Josh in a way that Donna hadn’t yet figured out how to be, and she knows Josh cares deeply for him, just like she knows that Josh is lying right then. She doesn’t know why he’d lie to her about something so trivial, but it makes her feel like she’s overstepped somehow, “I’m sorry,”

Josh sighs, shakes his head and rubs his mouth with the back of one hand, “You haven’t done anything wrong,” he squints at her, hesitates almost visibly and asks, “You could tell? About Leo?”

“Yes, but only because I was watching you,” Donna says, then bites down on the inside of her mouth because Josh’s eyebrows have just shot up and she realizes that this somehow sounds simultaneously too intimate and too accusatory, “I just mean… I can tell when you’re worried. Everyone else was worried about Governor Bartlet but _you_ were worried about Leo, and I only realized that because you wouldn’t leave his side. Leo’s side. And once I started, you know _, looking_ , I could see Leo was off tonight, but only because I _was_ looking. So… if you’re worried that someone else noticed you were worried then… I wouldn’t…um…worry,” She trails off lamely, feeling her face get warm and hoping she’s not bright red.

There is an excruciating stretch of silence and then Josh says, “You can tell when I’m worried?”

“I…yes?” Donna attempts to regain some footing, squares her shoulders and adds, “I’m something of an empath,”

Josh laughs suddenly and shakes his head. The tension in the room dissipates, “Go home Donna,”

“You also get this vein in your forehead,” Donna informs him, trying to get close enough to poke the offending area with her finger, “Right there, above your left…”

“Hey, hey, hands off!” Josh swats at her and slouches down in his chair out of her reach, “Go away from me now,”

“I’m just saying…”

“ _Away_ , Donnatella,”

Donna tries to look haughty but can’t manage it and has to hide her grin by tossing her hair and turning towards the door. Half-way there, she pauses, hand on the doorframe, and turns back, “Are you leaving soon?”

Josh still looks tired, still looks worried. He grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes, then finally, he nods, “Soon. Yeah,”

“Well, then I’ll leave when you do,” Donna gives him one last smile as she goes and tries not to notice the odd way he’s staring at her.

**~**

“Donna Moss it is your first Inaugural Ball, why are you not dancing?”

Donna, dressed in a strapless gown that’s a shade of red she should definitely wear more often, gives a Josh an anxious sort of smile and spins her champagne flute between her hands, “Because everyone here is a Head of State, or a famous celebrity or, or… you know, _that_ guy,” she gestures as a US Admiral, whose name escapes Josh, walks by in full regalia, “And I’m…” she waves at herself now, nearly sloshing her drink down her front, “…Me,”

Josh snorts. He’s had his own champagne and at some point someone handed him a glass of really good scotch, and that turned into three glasses and he’s going to regret that tomorrow but right now his head feels pleasantly muzzy, “That’s stupid. You’re way more fun than most of these people,” Donna gapes at him in a way he finds strangely delightful and Josh nods emphatically, “The smartest thing I did this whole campaign was hire you. I mean, you didn’t really give me a _choice_ , but I’m gonna take credit for it, ‘kay?” he takes her glass from her, drinks what’s left, puts it down and offers his arm, “And now you’re gonna dance with me,”

She looks at his hand, then up at his face, and Josh thinks it’s hilarious how the alcohol has made her cheeks flush so badly. “Okay,” Donna says, and links her arm through his.

**~**

The chili party is winding down as Josh, nursing a beer and watching Charlie and Zoey attempt to flirt without being interrupted by the President, feels rather than sees someone flop, not ungracefully, into the seat beside him. He knows without looking that it’s Donna, and she confirms this immediately, “I’m just saying,” she announces, despite there being no preamble in which she was saying anything at all, “That if we’re going to do Big Block of Cheese Day every year, the after party should be mandatory,”

“Oh my God, Donna do not say that within ear shot of the President or he’ll think we enjoy this,” Josh replies, though he actually agrees with her.

Donna sticks her tongue out at him, because apparently she is twelve years old, and takes a sip of her own beer, “So, what’s up?”

Josh raises an eyebrow at her, “Like, in general? Or…?”

“You’ve been, I don’t know, particularly _you_ today,” Donna eyes him over the top of her bottle, “Everything ok?”

This is one of many times with Donna where Josh isn’t sure whether to be impressed, touched, or just irritated. He decides to split the difference, “What the Hell, do you have a radar or something?”

“For your mercurial temperament? Obviously,” Donna says, “Besides, I’ve told you, I’m…”

“Something of an empath,” Josh finishes with a wry smile, “Yeah you’ve mentioned it once or twice,”

She makes a ‘there you have it’ gesture with her free hand, takes another swallow of beer and says, “So…”

“So, I’m fine, thank you for your concern,” Josh hopes this might be the end of the discussion, but then he actually takes a proper look at her face and realizes that, however much she’s playing this conversation off as blasé, she’s actually worried. Something in him shifts sideways, like a switch flipped and he finds himself saying, “My sister died in a fire,”

Donna blinks several times, slowly lowers her drink from her mouth and then even more slowly places it on the nearest table, like she’s suddenly forgotten how her limbs work, “Your… Joanie…your sister…the one that…the sister that died,”

Josh has sort of sprung this on her out of nowhere, so he decides just this once to forgive her sudden and total lack of verbal eloquence, “Yeah. She was babysitting me, and the kitchen caught fire. I got out she didn’t,” he puts his own beer down on the table, “Outside of my mother, you are now one of… four living people who know that,”

“Oh,” Donna seems to have absolutely no idea what to do with this information, “The other people are…”

“Leo, Sam. I told my therapist today. And now I’m telling you,” Josh, painfully aware that he’s just killed the buzz about as badly as a buzz can be killed, attempts a half-grin, “Bet you’re sorry you asked now,”

“No!” Donna says quickly, “No. I’m glad I… just… why are you… why today?”

Josh shrugs apologetically, “That’s classified,” off of her look he insists, “I’m not being cute, it really is classified,”

Donna narrows her eyes at him, then glances around the room like someone might be available to save her from this sudden confessional until her gaze hits Leo and immediately snaps back to Josh, “You had a meeting with Leo and that NSC guy today,”

Josh, who has just retrieved his beer and taken a mouthful, nearly aspirates it into his sinuses, “Okay, wow, you’re kind of a freak, you know that?”

“I do,”

“Yeah,” Josh gives her a disgruntled look and then sighs, “It just… I started thinking, life is random and stupid and thirteen-year-old girls die in fires for no good reason, and it’s not fair that, amongst the pre-existing chaos, we can also pick random, stupid criteria to help decide who’s worthy, some meaningless, arbitrary set of rules that mean you get to, you know, survive. Stuff. It’s dumb. We shouldn’t get to decide that. No one should,” At this point Donna looks like she might burst into tears, which is Josh’s cue to exit this conversation before she does something ridiculous like start sobbing or hug him, “And now, speaking of surviving stuff, I’m going to go distract President Bartlet before Zoey stages a coups,”

“Josh,” Donna stops him before he manages to escape, “When Joanie... You know you couldn’t have done anything. You would have died too if you’d stayed in the house,”

“People keep telling me that,” Josh says with a shrug, “And I’m just saying, from now on, no matter what, if the building is on fire or the world is ending, I’m not leaving unless you’re coming with me,”

**~**

“You know what are fun? Luaus. If we went to Hawaii we could go to a Luau,”

Josh, who is sitting at his desk sorting through the list of poll questions from Joey Lucas, rolls his eyes up to look at her without raising his head, “Are you still on about this?”

Donna doesn’t reply directly, just leans one hip against the door jam and continues, “I’ve never been to a Luau. You’re supposed to be expanding my horizons and I’ve never even been to a Luau,”

“You just said they were fun,” Josh points out, “How do you know if they’re fun if you’ve never been to one?”

“I _imagine_ that they’re fun,” Donna replies, “My college roommate had a Luau themed birthday party once. She made frozen cocktails with little umbrellas and bought those fake plastic leis. Every time someone new arrived she’d throw them one and yell ‘you’re getting lei’d’!”

Josh now has that look he gets when he’s trying to decide whether to laugh or strangle her, which is a look she not-so-secretly delights in prompting, “Donna, if I promise to take you to Hawaii at some point in the unspecified future, will you leave my office and do the work I pay you to do?”

“Yes,” Donna says, after pausing just long enough that she sees him consider throwing something at her, “I’d look cute in a grass skirt you know,”

“Undoubtedly,” Josh deadpans. But he’s smiling when she leaves.

**~**

“Remember he’s on heavy painkillers so he’ll be a bit out of it, but you can talk to him like normal,”

Donna bobs her head in assent, but in truth barely hears the doctor. She’s far too anxious to pay attention to what he’s saying, especially since the First Lady already warned her about all of this in the waiting room. Donna doesn’t care if Josh is half asleep and talking backwards in Latin. It has been 26 hours, and she hasn’t slept or changed her clothes, or eaten anything except half of a very stale bagel that CJ practically forced down her throat, and Donna doesn’t care how conscious he is, she just needs to see that her best friend is alive.

The thing that strikes her when she steps into the room, is how still Josh is. Josh is never still, not ever. He’s always moving, hands waving, running through twenty-seven facial expressions a minute, like his everything inside him is too big for his skin, like it’s always trying to escape. Josh is a storm, he’s a walking, talking electrical charge. Seeing him motionless, inert, is like seeing a person with their face on upside down. It’s wrong, all wrong. He doesn’t _look_ alive lying there like that. He doesn’t even look like _Josh_.

The doctor does a cursory check of the many machines blinking and beeping around the bed and then says, in that gentle doctor voice all medical professionals have, “Josh? You’ve got a visitor,”

Donna wouldn’t have known that Josh was awake if the doctor hadn’t spoken, and for a moment she’s still not sure he is until, very slowly, Josh turns his head towards the door and says, “Oh hey, it’s Donna,” in the smallest, raspiest, barely there voice, bleary with drugs and pain.

Both hands fly to her mouth, “Hi,” Donna manages to squeak out between her fingers. She feels like she might choke to death on her own heart.

“Hi,” He squints at her like he can’t make his eyes focus, which he probably can’t, and frowns so deeply his forehead creases, “You’re so far away,”

Donna practically leaps across the room, so fixated on the bed that she doesn’t even notice the doctor excuse himself, “I’m here,” she says, “I just… I’m right here,”

Josh struggles to keep his gaze on her. He looks so pale and small and she wants so badly to touch him, his hand or his hair or something, but she’s not sure if she’s allowed or if doing so might hurt him. “Hi,” he says again, and yes, the painkillers are keeping him barely conscious let alone able to hold any kind of conversation, but Donna doesn’t care. She perches on the edge of the chair beside the bed, pulls it as close as she can, so her knees are bumped up against the bed frame. Josh watches her, eyes drifting open and closed. He frowns again, and his fingers twitch like he’s trying to lift his hand but can’t, “Your face is all wet,” he whispers hoarsely, in that same voice that is so tiny and diminished but still his and therefore the best thing Donna has ever heard.

She brings her fingers to her cheek, “Yes,” she says, wiping the tears with the back of her hand and hoping her smile isn’t as wobbly as it feels, “Yeah. I’m just really happy to see you,”

**~**

“How many stiches?”

“I dunno, like twenty-three,”

“ _Twenty-three?_ ”

“Or, you know, six, but it felt like twenty-three,”

“That’s because of your thing with blood,”

“I do _not_ have a thing with blood,”

“You absolutely do, which is why, I think, I’m going to give you just a little bit of credit for getting your hand bandaged up and getting yourself into work without fainting at all,”

“Who says I didn’t faint?”

“….. Did you faint?”

“No,”

“……”

“……”

“Were you going for a brag there, or-?”

“I’m honestly not sure,”

“Anyway, are you all right by yourself tonight? I can come in, we can watch a Christmas movie. It’s a Wonderful Life or something,”

“Oh my God,”

“What? I’m just making sure you don’t want company,”

“Donna…”

“You’re all one-handed and weird, I thought you might need…”

“I’m not gonna off myself if that’s what you’re asking,”

“Josh. That’s not funny,”

“I just…”

“ _Josh_ ,”

“….No. Sorry. You’re right, I’m sorry,”

“…..”

“…..”

“Fine. Just… call me. Okay? Any hour of the night. If you change your mind,”

“Sure,”

“I’m serious,”

“I know,”

“Yeah?”

“…Yeah,”

“Merry Christmas Joshua,”

“Merry Christmas,”

**~**

Donna seems like the sort of person who would be a crier, bursting into tears at the slightest provocation, but she’s not. No matter the calamity – and there have been many - Donna has always been steady and stoic. She gets emotional, she _feels_ things, but she doesn’t break down. _He’s_ the basket case, she’s the rock he anchors himself to.

So when Josh comes into work at five in the morning on the day of Mrs. Landingham’s funeral and finds Donna standing in the middle of his office with tears streaming down her face, he nearly retreats back down the hallway and goes home to bed because if _Donna_ is this upset this early, than today is going to be even more terrible than he’d anticipated.

Instead, he clears his throat to get her attention and hitches his backpack up on one shoulder. He’s not sure he should come into the room, which is insane because it is _his_ office after all, “Donna?”

Donna jumps, swipes at her face with her sleeve and says in a dismayed, too-thick voice, “You’re _early_ ,”

Josh decides not to point out that she is also very early and instead goes for the next obvious tactic, “You’re crying,”

“Wow Josh, how perceptive of you,” Donna snaps. Josh thinks she’s trying to be scathing but her voice jumps the track somewhere mid-sentence and she ends up on a weird, breathy warble that makes her eyes well up again, “God _damn_ it,” she whispers, clearly to herself, and angrily scrubs at her face.

Josh isn’t sure what to do. Does he hug her? Hugs seem like an appropriate comfort response here, but the way Donna is standing, with her shoulders and neck so tense and her arms gathered like she’s getting ready to defend herself seem to indicate that physical contact would be unwise at this juncture. Still, he takes a couple steps towards her and lifts his hands in what he hopes is a non-threatening way, like she’s a skittish wild creature, “Hey, stop that,” he says finally, because she’s still trying furiously to stop the tears tracking down her cheeks, “ You’re making your face all red,” he digs what he’s pretty sure is a clean wad of Kleenex out of the pocket of his coat and holds them out to her, “here,”

Donna looks at the tissues, sniffles and says, “Ew,” but takes them anyway. She dabs her eyes and then looks at him, mouth still dangerously wobbly and adds, “I couldn’t sleep. You weren’t supposed to be here yet,”

“So…” Josh doesn’t like feeling quite this wrong-footed, quite this early in the morning, “You… came in to have a good cry before I got here?”

Donna gives him a withering look, but at least doesn’t start crying again, which he takes as an improvement, “No, I came in early because the President has MS, Mrs. Landingham died and at some point after her funeral this afternoon we’re finding out if we’re all gonna be looking for new jobs in a year, and I _couldn’t sleep,_ ” She’s managing the scathing tone a lot better now, but then she sighs and deflates, the wind going out of her all at once, “The crying was an… unexpected by-product,”

“Not that unexpected,” Josh says, a little more gently than he’s been speaking so far.

“I just…” Donna seems to be having a hard time looking him in the face. She rolls her eyes up at the ceiling, then out the window, then finally settles on staring into her own arms, which she’s wrapped around herself like she’s cold, “In the hospital. She held my hand for three solid hours. She didn’t say anything, she just held my hand and I never thanked her for that,”

Josh doesn’t need to be told to who, or what, or when Donna is referring, “She wouldn’t have wanted you to,”

Donna presses her lips together, “I should have done it anyway. People like Mrs. Landingham give and give all the time to everyone and it’s so normal that no one thinks to thank them for it. I should have thanked her,” she takes a shuddering breath, “She was coming back in her new car and she _died_ , Josh. That’s so stupid. It’s such a _waste_. This whole week has been just stupid and random and unfair,”

“Yeah, I know,” Josh says. He runs a hand through his hair and exhales audibly through his nose, “I’ve got some experience with stupid, random and unfair,”

This finally gets Donna to lift her gaze to look at him properly. Her face is red and streaky, despite her best efforts, “Yes,” she says softly, “You do,” she sniffles, and wipes her eyes with the Kleenex again, “I hate this,”

This, Josh decides, is the appropriate moment for a hug, because he can’t handle her looking at him with that face for one more second, and nothing is going to be okay if Donna isn’t okay. He holds his arms out and she just walks straight into them, without pause, and presses her face into his chest. “It’ll be fine,” he says into her hair, “I promise, somehow, it’ll be fine,”

“All right,” Donna says. Her voice is muffled by the front of his shirt when she adds, without lifting her head, “If you tell me it’s going to be fine, then I believe you,”

Josh hugs her a bit tighter, the rock he anchors himself to, “Okay,”

**~**

The morning after Dr. Bartlet’s birthday party, three things are true: Donna is hung over, she’s pretty sure she told the First Lady of the United States that she deserves to have her medical license suspended, and she isn’t one hundred percent certain if she’s still American.

She’s sitting at her desk with her eyes closed, digging her knuckles into both temples and willing the headache to go away when she hears Josh amble out of his office and halt in front of her workspace, “Well if it isn’t Canuck Cathy,” he says in a voice so chipper it makes her want to punch him. He must have gotten laid last night. Donna decides that today she despises everything in the whole world, “Ready for your citizenship exam?”

“Oh my God that was real,” Donna groans, without opening her eyes, “Kill me,”

“Hey look, it’s not all bad, I already pulled all today’s files for you,”

Donna opens one eye and peers up at him suspiciously, “You did?”

“Uh huh,” Josh drops the stack on her desk, then takes a step backwards and clasps his hands together behind his back expectantly.

Suspicious feelings increasing, Donna opens the other eye, raises one eyebrow and looks down at the files. They are painstakingly marked and labelled, the way she would have normally done herself, except that every page marker and sticky note, each and every one, is printed in the shape of the Canadian flag. It must have taken him _ages_. Donna stares for nearly a full minute, before rolling her eyes up to Josh and saying, deadpan, “I need you to know that I hate you with every fiber of my being,”

“Yup,” Josh grins at her, produces another miniature flag from behind his back, and drops it into her pen holder, “Go get a coffee, you look like hell,” he tells her cheerfully, and then breezes away for Senior Staff.

“ _Every fiber of my being!_ ” Donna calls after him. But she keeps the little flag there for the rest of the week.

**~**

“You wrote a memo,”

Josh glances up at Donna who has materialized in his doorway, beaming like she’s lit from the inside. He blinks, “What?”

“About Mrs. Morello,” Donna says, “You wrote a memo to the President for me,”

He tries to put on an innocent face but finds it’s very hard not to smile when she’s _glowing_ at him like that, “I have no earthly clue what you’re talking about,”

Donna seems unfazed by his performance, “Okay,” she says, still grinning that hundred-watt grin, “Well… just know, it made my day. My week. My whole month maybe. It really did,”

“It’s been, you know, rough around here,” Josh says, still not conceding that he had anything to do with anything that may or may not have happened in the Oval Office that afternoon. And he’s making an understatement. Between the hearings and the censure and Cliff Calley and the diary and Lord only knows whatever the Hell is ever going on with Amy, things have been weird, and strained and stressful. He clears his throat and adds, in an off-hand way, “And some people just give and give, and no one ever thinks to thank them,”

Somehow, the beaming gets beamier, “Like Molly Morello,” Donna says.

Josh makes a small chuffing noise in the back of his throat, “No dummy, like you,” her face folds into complete, dumbfounded bewilderment so fast that Josh nearly laughs, but he keeps a grip on himself – after all, he is affecting nonchalance here and he is nothing if not method – and flaps a hand in the direction of the door, “Now get out of here and do some work or something,”

Donna doesn’t reply, just backs out of the room with the same thunderstruck look on her face, leaving Josh grinning into the empty air.

**~**

Donna’s face is white. Not her usual fair skinned, alabaster, whatever, but white, white, like she’s seen a ghost. It’s alarming enough to halt Josh in his tracks, “You heard,”

“Carol told me,” Donna confirms in a tiny voice, “Poor CJ,”

“Yeah,” Josh looks her up and down. CJ is Donna’s friend, and Donna feels everything keenly, but Josh is surprised that Simon’s death is hitting Donna this hard. She looks like she might throw up, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Donna says, then shakes her head, “No. Yes. I don’t know,” she pushes her hair back from her face. Her hand is shaking, just a little, “Carol said there was a shooting, and my first thought… even though I knew you were at home, I thought…”

Josh blinks. One hand drifts involuntarily to his chest, “Oh,”

**~**

“Do I really want to know why there’s an autographed copy of “Leasing Yourself” sitting on my desk right now?”

“I thought you’d want to understand where the revolutionary movement of the new millennium came from. The humble origins of the great metamorphosis of our emotional awareness,”

“There is literally is nothing I want less,”

“Because, Josh, if you can’t _own_ your truth then at least you can…”

“I swear on all that is holy, Donna, if you say ‘lease it’ I’m firing you,”

“You can try, but, as we both know, I’m impervious,”

“You are NOT still impervious. The statute of limitations on your imperviousness ran out two years ago!”

“There is no statute of limitations on my imperviousness. I’m impervious forever,”

“ _I_ am _your_ boss! You don’t get to set the impervious limits, I do!”

“And yet…”

“And yet?”

“Still impervious,”

“You’re a bully, is what you are. I’m being bullied,”

“That’s because you haven’t begun leasing your truth. Open yourself to the possibilities Josh. Locate your light switch. Your soul will expand like a flower,”

“Oh my God,”

“Like a _flower_ , Josh,”

“Donna Moss,”

“Yes?”

“Get out of my office,”

**~**

Standing in the snow, waiting for her cab to arrive, Donna phones Josh’s cell. She’s not sure if he’s still at the office, or if Leo convinced him to go home, but he picks up on the third ring, sounding a little like he ran from wherever he was, “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me,” she blinks snow off of her eyelashes and hunches into her coat, “Where are you?”

“I’m sitting at my desk eating a left over bratwurst, where are _you_?”

“I’m ankle deep in a snow drift waiting for my ride,” Donna says, “Leo didn’t let you leave?”

Josh doesn’t seem to hear the last part, “Why are you out in this weather? Didn’t Jack meet your… it was a helicopter, right? Leo said a news helicopter but that sounded made up,”

Donna smiles wryly, “It was a helicopter, yes. And I have to say, not my favourite mode of transportation, especially in a blizzard, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that,”

There’s a bit of static on the other end of the line, probably a combination of the weather and the crappy cell reception in Josh’s office, and Donna hears him move, presumably towards the window so he can hear her better, “Ok, my point still stands, why wasn’t your boyfriend waiting there for you to land?”

He doesn’t say it particularly aggressively, but Donna hears the tone of indignation, underpinned by something else… protectiveness? She’s not sure. Either way, she ignores it, “We had to land a few miles further south because of the weather and I told Jack I’d take a cab. No one should be driving around in this mess,”

“Except you. In your cab,”

“It’s fine Josh, I’m fine,” It’s definitely a note of protectiveness she’s hearing. More than a note actually, and Donna doesn’t want to dwell on what that means, “The car will be here in five minutes, it’s a twenty-minute drive. No big deal,”

“Okay,” Josh manages to pack an enormous amount of passive aggression into those two syllables. There’s a pause during which Donna imagines him doing something like writing ‘Jack Reese sucks’ in the condensation on his window, “So, did you call me for a specific reason, or…?”

“Oh,” Distracted by the immediate turn the conversation took, Donna has, in fact, forgotten why she phoned, “I just wanted to apologize for taking off without saying anything. Leo sort of sprung the whole helicopter thing on me and you weren’t in your office to say goodbye, and I didn’t have time to run around the building looking for you,”

There is an even longer pause this time and then Josh says, “You’re twenty minutes from an all-expenses paid Christmas vacation spent with Mr. Dashing Solider Boy in one of the swankiest Inns in, like, the mid-west, and you’re phoning me to say ‘sorry I didn’t say goodbye’?”

Now that he’s pointed it out, it does sound a bit… Donna’s not sure, “I… yes?”

“Well that’s… nice of you,” Josh says. She can actually hear him grinning through the phone and is entirely unsure what to make of it.

“I felt bad!” Donna exclaims, feeling defensive and embarrassed and not positive why she feels either of those things, “It’s Christmas, and you’re all alone,”

Josh snorts, “Ah yes, you know me, abandoned by my enormous Gentile family for whom Christmas is such a big deal,” Donna winces into the night sky but doesn’t reply to this, “Seriously, Donna, you’re supposed to be having a good time, not worrying about me,”

Donna nearly drops her cell phone, “I’m not worrying about you!” She protests way too loudly, “I just…” What? Miss you? Wanted to hear your voice? How the hell is she planning on finishing this sentence? “I just didn’t want to be rude,” the silence on the other end of the line stretches long enough that she is saved by the appearance of headlights coming towards her. Donna silently thanks God, “My cab is here,”

“Good,” Josh says. She hears him flip the phone from one hand to the other, “So stop being… whatever you’re being right now, and enjoy your break, will you?”

“Yeah,” Donna nods, “I will. Thanks,” the cab has pulled up now and she begins carefully picking her way through the snow towards it, “Talk to you later,”

“Sure. Hey,” Josh adds, before she can hang up, “Do me a favour and send me a quick message once you’re there safe? The roads are really bad,”

Donna tosses her bag into the back seat and looks at her phone as though she can see Josh’s face in the tiny display screen. Her chest hurts, and she doesn’t know why, “I will,” she promises, and ends the call.

**~**

Josh realizes, as he leaves the Oval Office, that the bottoms of his pants are water stained. This seems impossible, because surely three lifetimes have passed since he and Charlie took an unexpected wade through the arboretum creek and surely he has not been wearing the same suit for the entirety of three lifetimes. But, of course, it’s only been hours, not days or months or years and if he ever thinks to forget that, the ring of dried creek sediment circling his legs at mid-calf will remind him. A few hours ago he was helping Charlie make a romantic gesture for a girl he still has feelings for and that girl was safe and sound and _right there_. And now…

Well.

No one knows, he thinks. Outside of the people who were just in the Oval and the joint chiefs, no one else knows that the entire world has flipped completely upside down in the last fifteen minutes. Josh wishes he could keep it that way.

When he turns the corner past CJ’s office towards his own, Donna is standing at the fax machine, shoveling sheaves of paper into the recycling bin. Her body language is tense, her shoulders up around her ears, and she shreds several handfuls of paper in her fists before heaving them into the bin and wiping her hands on her pant legs like the documents have left a residue. More mail from Josh’s fan club evidently.

Josh stops where he is. It isn’t that he thinks she’s going to berate him for the messages again – even if she did, Josh knows she just be just using him as a target for her own helplessness, like the first time – it’s that Donna doesn’t know yet. Donna doesn’t know that the President, _their_ President, is no longer in charge. She doesn’t know that this man they both respect and admire so much has willingly removed himself from office because he can no longer lead _and_ be a father to a missing girl and that Josh is proud and furious and terrified all at once.

Josh has to tell Donna this and he doesn’t know how.

At the opposite end of the bullpen, Donna either hears, or maybe just senses, him standing there because she suddenly straightens up and turns around. She opens her mouth to say something – his name, Josh thinks – but stops halfway. Her eyebrows draw together. Without looking, she drops the last of the papers into the bin and then begins to walk towards him. She goes slowly, like he might startle if she moves too fast, or maybe because she’s a little afraid.

Donna stops less than three feet away, not quite close enough to touch. Josh looks at her. He had her making a thousand phone calls tonight, to more people than he can name. She’s been here for nearly twenty-four hours. She knows that Senior Staff was in the Oval, has to have some idea what’s going on, and Josh wills her to read what’s happened in his face because he can’t, he can’t, he just cannot make himself say the words out loud.

And he doesn’t have to. Because Donna looks at him, takes one good hard look at his face and Josh sees her realize, sees her put the pieces together, sees her shoulders drop and her eyes close for just one moment. Donna make a tiny noise, an quick intake of breath, a sigh, Josh isn’t sure, and then he watches her gather herself, the way he has watched Donna gather herself for every new crisis, every new hurdle, every new impossible thing they have to live through.

When she looks at him the next time, there’s a question on her face. _Are you okay?_ She doesn’t have to say it out loud, Josh reads it in her furrowed brow, her pursed lips, the tilt of her head. He shrugs, shakes his head, rubs his thumb over his mouth; _yes, I don’t know, maybe, not really_.

Donna gives a strained smile and then, perhaps because the area is devoid of any other signs of life or perhaps because at moments like these she knows he needs her to be his friend not his employee, she takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. Her fingers are warm, and her grip is steady.

And Josh thinks, well, the building might be on fire, the world might be ending, but at least he’s got her with him.

**~**

Donna feels a little bit like she’s dragged herself to Christmas by her fingernails. Her fingernails and sheer stubbornness and enough black coffee that she’s probably got more caffeine than blood in her system at that point. But she’s here, she made it, through the twenty-fifth amendment, and Senator Carrick and the shutdown and a dozen other more minor crisis besides, so hallelujah, thank whatever for small miracles and all that.

But it’s not as though she gets to actually relax this holiday, no, no she had to go promise her parents that she’d come home for Christmas this year. So now, instead of doing what she’d like, which is to say, sleeping until her alarm rings on December twenty seventh, Donna is throwing things into an overnight bag that, any other year, she’d have packed two weeks ago.

She fills her carry on with just enough clothes to last until Boxing Day, her essential toiletries and her parent’s gifts, then begins transferring the few items she needs from her over-sized purse into a smaller handbag. Donna is fishing for the paperback true crime novel she’s been working on ( _Small Sacrifices – Ann Rule_ , about a sociopathic mother, _ha ha_ her own mother will say, _very funny_ ) when her fingers brush, instead, against a length of ribbon, tied into a bow.

Donna pauses, then carefully withdraws the gift. Josh had practically thrown it at her as she’d been packing up to leave, “Open it later,” he’d instructed, which was odd because he’d also been taunting her about this gift for days and Donna had assumed he would want to see her face when she opened it. When she’d said as much, Josh had just grinned enigmatically, repeated the command and sauntered away, throwing a ‘Merry Christmas Donna’ over his shoulder as he went.

The box is small – small enough that she’s not willing to rule out the possibility that he has, in fact, gotten her a gift card – wrapped simply in candy-cane striped paper and tied with red ribbon. The bow is a bit lop-sided which makes Donna wonder if Josh actually wrapped it himself, didn’t just pay for gift wrapping at whatever store he bought whatever this is at.

Probably ‘open this later’ meant on Christmas morning, but Donna is loathe to open anything from Josh in front of her mother and father, because the latter will almost certainly do a lot of suggestive eyebrow waggling, while the former launches into the laundry list of reasons why ‘she’s always liked that boy’ and yikes. Yeah, not opening it tomorrow. Matter decided, Donna pulls apart the uneven bow, and uses her forefinger to pop open the tape.

Beneath the wrapping is a small white box, embossed with gold typeface. Donna’s jaw drops open and her eyebrows shoot up so fast it’s as though all of her features are trying to fly off of her face.

Inside, is a bracelet.

It’s charm bracelet, to be precise, the kind that have become popular in the last few years and that Donna has admired on other people but never thought she’d own herself. It’s an expensive piece of jewelry. Way too expensive for any boss to be giving their assistant.

And that’s not even the part that’s really knocked her flat. That’s not the part that has her suddenly feeling as though someone has reached straight into her chest and squeezed her heart in their fist and so glad, _so glad_ , that she is alone in her apartment not anywhere where people can see her. That’s not the part that makes her eyes well up and her breath hitch like she’s been sucker punched.

The part that does that is the charm.

The charm, which is a perfect, tiny, replica stop light. And Donna doesn’t know how Josh has done it, whether, by some bizarre fluke of the universe, the charm was designed like this or if he customized it himself, but there is one spot of colour set into the silver: a bright scarlet piece of cut glass, twinkling from the spot where the red light would be.

**~**

Josh hears Donna before he sees her, huffing and puffing dramatically as she trudges up the hill to where he has asked her to meet him. It’s pitch dark and freezing cold and they both have to work in the morning, so the dramatics might be warranted but Josh still raises an eyebrow as she reaches the top of the hill looking like she’s just scaled the Matterhorn. “And you give _me_ a hard time about what bad shape I’m in,”

Donna glowers at him, “I work a desk job at the White House, where it’s been one catastrophe after another for like six months running, it doesn’t leave much time for cardio,” she flips the collar of her coat up against the wind and shivers into her pale pink scarf, looking grumpy, “At least I eat green food, like, ever,”

“Hey, I’m not a rabbit, I like meat,” Josh replies cheerfully, undeterred by her scowling.

“You like _charcoal_ ,” Donna corrects him, rubbing the tip of her nose – which has already gone pink from cold – with one gloved hand. She sighs, breath pluming, and then seems to remember that they’re on a hill in the dark in the middle of the night, “So… what exactly is happening right now?”

Josh bounces on the balls of his feet like an overeager toddler, “I wanted to show you something,”

Donna looks first alarmed, then intrigued, then settles into vaguely disgruntled before she finally notices what’s been standing behind Josh this whole time, “Oh my God, is that a _telescope_?”

“Yup,”

“The NASA lady gave you a telescope?!” Donna, jaw hanging open, mouths wordlessly for a moment before saying, “That’s _extravagant_ ,” she manages to draw this word into several more syllables than it usually has.

Josh rolls his eyes, “Stop implying what you’re implying, it’s just a gift,” he says. He bounces over to Donna and tugs the sleeve of her coat, “C’mere, take a look,”

Donna’s eyebrows, which have already journeyed half-way up her forehead, practically disappear into her hairline, “You… First you give me the whole ‘space the final frontier’ speech this afternoon and then you call me up here to look through a telescope. With you,”

“Yup,” Josh says again, grinning.

“Oka-a-a-y,” Donna takes a moment to absorb this, looking from Josh to the expensive piece of scientific equipment behind him, to the sky then back to Josh again, “Why?”

Josh grins even more broadly and shakes his head, like this is the most obvious answer in the world, “Because it’s amazing. And I wanted you to see it,”

**~**

“It might be a while yet before she wakes up,”

In the hospital room, surrounded by the soft beeping of machines, Josh is finally alone except for the nurse. Donna’s mom is going to arrive within the hour and Colin has gone to freshen up, but Josh has remained precisely where he’s been since they wheeled Donna out of surgery and he will remain there until she either wakes up or someone removes him by force.

The nurse gives him a knowing look. It’s been this same woman the whole time Josh has been here, and her eyes are kind, “You can talk to her you know. Sometimes that brings folks around faster. Hearing a voice they recognize,”

Josh nods, absently. It has been who knows how long since he arrived in Germany, and he hasn’t slept or changed his clothes, or eaten anything except a very dry vending machine granola bar that practically choked him, but he is absolutely not leaving this room because the last time he left he came back to an empty bed and blood on the floor and so he needs to stay right here. He needs to stay right here, watching her, because that is the only way he can be certain that his best friend is still alive.

The nurse checks Donna’s chart, flashes Josh a bracing smile, and then leaves them be.

Donna, in the bed, is so still it scares him. She is breathing, yes, but Josh hates seeing her face, which is so expressive and vibrant, like it gives off its own light, motionless like this. It’s like she’s not in there. It’s like the part of Donna that is Donna has gone somewhere else.

Josh takes her hand, carefully, like cupping a butterfly in his palm, like he might break her. He had told Donna that she was going to be fine because she believes him when he says that things will be fine, and Josh doesn’t know what he’ll do if it turns out that this time he lied to her.

He doesn’t pray much, that’s not really his thing, but he promises anything that will listen that, if she wakes up and there is brain damage, he will help her. He’ll teach her to speak, read, walk, he doesn’t care, he’ll do whatever she needs. “Anything you need,” and Josh says this part out loud, with every ounce of feeling he can muster, because maybe the nurse is right and if he can pull Donna back to earth with the sheer force of what she means to him, then he’ll talk for a hundred years, “Anything you need, I promise. Just please, please come back,” he bows his head, lifts her hand so the backs of her fingers are pressed against his forehead. Like he’s asking her for a blessing. Like he’s begging her to forgive him, “I need you to come back,”

**~**

There is a particular fear that flares to life in Josh’s eyes the first time he sees that Donna has put herself on his schedule. Donna is well-tuned to this look, the look she calls, privately, the Josh Lyman Sense of Impending Doom. It’s his early warning signal, the thing that tells him something is wrong, the thing that tells him he’s about to get his ass handed to him by the universe again. The trouble is Josh tends to ignore whatever deeper intuition sets off the alarm in the first place and so Donna has learned to recognize it on her own so that she can brace for impact on his behalf. So that at least one of them is still standing after the latest meteor hits.

She promised herself once that she would never, ever, let herself be the cause of that look. That she would never be the thing that hurts him.

Donna doesn’t know if Gaza counts as having broken that promise seeing as how she did not intentionally get herself blown up. But she figures that if it didn’t count then this will.

Donna doesn’t break promises. This, she thinks, will be only the second time.

The first time happens five seconds after the precise moment that Josh sees her name penciled into his day planner, looks up at her with that fear, that uniquely Josh fear flashing across his features and asks, “You’re formally requesting a meeting with me? Should I be worried?”

And Donna, who can’t stand to see him looking at her like that, who hates that she is the _reason_ he’s looking at her like that, shakes her head, says, “No. Everything’s fine,” and breaks the promise she once made never to lie to him.

**~**

Donna quits and Josh doesn’t believe her.

Then she empties her desk, her desk of nearly seven years, into a pair of banker’s boxes and walks out of the West Wing, and Josh doesn’t notice.

At home, completely untethered for the first time in years, Donna drinks three mugs of tea just for something to do, watches two back to back reruns of Home Improvement, has a bath, does her laundry, checks the phone, checks the phone, checks the phone, and Josh doesn’t call.

When Will Bailey hires her, and then, nearly right away, sends her to New Hampshire for two weeks, all on her own, with no one to answer to, no one’s schedule to manage, no one’s life to keep in order but her own, Donna thinks, yes, okay, I was right, this is good. This is good.

She comes home feeling, if not happy, then somewhere in happy’s airspace, and she doesn’t think about Josh, because why would she think about Josh when this is what she wanted. This is what she needed, and he was never going to give it to her, so she had to take it for herself and she doesn’t think about Josh until she checks her phone messages.

Donna has had her cell phone with her the whole trip. There is no reason that anyone would phone her landline unless they’re selling something. Or unless they didn’t want to risk her answering.

Because, on her answering machine there are four missed calls time stamped one after the other. The first three are just hang ups – a brief silence and then the click of a line going dead. But the fourth is more. The fourth is a stretch of quiet, about fifteen seconds long. Fifteen seconds of nothing and then a quick furtive noise, the intake of breath, the preparation to speak, and then the click as the person hangs up, unable to find the correct words to say.

Donna listens to the message three times. She doesn’t delete it.

**~**

In a hotel room in Iowa, Josh, sprawled on top of the bed, half in and half out of yesterday’s clothes, like he fell asleep mid-undressing – because he _did_ fall asleep mid-undressing - is awakened by a knock on his door. There is, as there often is these days, a moment where he has absolutely no idea where he is, followed by the weird swoop through the guts as he remembers.

Iowa. Hotel. Campaign. Ethanol pledge. Santos. It all comes back in fits and starts as Josh sits up, rubs his eyes and wonders what the Hell his life even is anymore.

Again, a knock on the door.

Josh looks at the clock. 5:30am. It’s not so early that it couldn’t be Ronna or Ned or Bram or who whoever the hell else works for him now - Josh is having a terrible time with all the names - but for some reason he has the sudden, unshakable thought that it must be Donna.

She’s woken up across the hall and decided to come over and talk to him, because she will have sensed, in her freakish Donna way, that Josh wants – no, needs, badly needs – to talk to her. They cannot have grown so far removed from each other that she wouldn’t have been able to sense that. She is, after all, something of an empapth. And so she’s probably standing in the hall feeling awkward but resolute because Donna wouldn’t have lost her nerve the way he did. Donna has always been braver than him. Always.

“Just a second!” Josh calls, lurching up from the bed. He’s in his boxer shorts but still has his work shirt on, half undone so he’s not exactly indecent but if Donna has, in fact, come to speak with him, it seems very important that he at least manage to put pants on.

When Josh finally throws the door open, he is so convinced, has so thoroughly talked himself into this idea that it has to be Donna on the other side, that when he finds, instead, a tiny, dark-haired hotel employee standing in the hallway, he is momentarily at a loss for words, “Uh…?”

“Room service?” The woman says, looking nonplussed, as though his confusion is contagious.

Whatever small amount of wind he’s managed to muster wooshes out of Josh in the space of two heartbeats, leaving him feeling emptier than before, like there’s too much space in his chest, “I didn’t order room service,” he says, pressing the heel of his hand to his breastbone, as though he might be able to feel his heart rattling around in there.

The woman, checks the order form taped to the rolling cart at her side, “Josh Lyman, room 413,” her eyes flick to the room number to confirm, “Coffee, egg white omelet, fruit tray, no cantaloupe, bacon… well it says burned but probably just crispy, right?”

“Yeah, but I…” Josh trails off, eyes resting on the food tray. Something itches in the back of his brain, “It says to burn the bacon?”

“Yes. But I’m sure it just means crispy,” The woman gestures at her cart, “There’s a note too. On the tray. Should I bring it in?”

Josh steps aside to allow her to wheel the cart into the room, tips her with a crumpled five dollar bill that was wadded up in the pocket of his pants, and then goes straight for the note that is tucked under the edge of the stainless steel cloche that’s covering the plate.

The note does not say “I’m sorry”, it does not say “I miss you” it does not say “I made a terrible mistake and will shortly be leaving Will Bailey and the Bingo Bob campaign to work for you again,” or any of the things Josh could have possibly imagined a note in this context might have said.

What it says is: _Eat all of this. You look like Hell._

Josh folds the square of paper back up, carefully, and tucks it into the breast pocket of the suit jacket he set out to wear today, a place it will stay for several days, resting next to his heart. The bacon, when he finally lifts the cover to take a look, is, indeed, burned to a crisp.

**~**

Will finishes his beer quickly and wanders away to go lick his wounds, leaving Josh and Donna sitting together with no one around for the first time in… well… a while. Donna thinks it feels just a tiny bit like old times – the pair of them, up way too late after way too long a day, nursing beers and making excuses not to go home – except in old times the silence didn’t ever feel so fraught. In old times, Donna didn’t find herself continually opening her mouth to say something only to have her words abandon her.

It’s not that she can’t speak. She’s said congratulations about thirty times, and great job, and he couldn’t have done it without you Josh, and wow Leo on the ticket is a strong choice, and absolutely nothing that actually matters, just blah, blah, blah, like they aren’t anything more than strangers from opposing campaigns exchanging niceties.

Donna doesn’t regret joining Bob Russell’s campaign. She really doesn’t. She’s learned more than she ever imagined she could learn, feels like she’s come into her own, finally. Like she actually takes up space in this world she’s been scrabbling around in for so many years. So she doesn’t regret it.

But she does regret this. This _silence_.

Eventually Josh gets up to leave. He taps his beer bottle against hers in farewell, instead of touching her shoulder like he might have done once upon a time. She and Josh used to have no concept of personal space, and now it’s like there’s a wall in between them.

Donna regrets the wall as well.

She lets Josh make it to the door before she can’t stand it anymore and leaps to her feet, “Josh!” he turns expectantly, this look on his face like he was hoping she’d stop him, this look that makes her heart stutter sideways and Donna blurts, instead of saying anything she actually wants to say, “They got it right. Santos is the right choice,”

The hopeful expression folds in on itself, leaving Josh looking nothing but tired, “Thanks,”

“You’re going to do great. After this,” Donna babbles, all while her brain screams at her to say what she means, to say what she _wants_. She is supposed to have gotten better at saying what she wants, “You’re going to be brilliant,”

Josh makes a small weary sound, “We’ll see,”

“You are,” Donna says, even though what she means is: _but you need me to help_ , even though what she wants is: _take me with you_. “I know you,”

“Yeah,” Josh smiles. It’s the kind of smile that hurts both of them, “You do. Goodnight Donna,”

She thinks; _We’ll get it right this time, we’ll do it properly, I’m good at this, you need me, take me with you, take me with you, take me with you._

She says; “Goodnight,”

**~**

“That was a good call. About the women’s alliance,”

Donna slants a look at Josh from behind the swoop of her bangs, not entirely sure that it’s safe to make full eye contact, “Thanks,” she says trying to keep her tone light, “I do make them sometimes,”

These are the first words that she and Josh have exchanged directly since yelling at each other about loyalty and career choices and burned hamburgers for approximately thirty-five seconds in a hotel room. Thirty-five seconds before Lou interrupted them with news of Vinnick and the Women’s Alliance and derailed any progress they might have made actually discussing their feelings for, oh, who knows, once ever.

“More than sometimes,” Josh says, after a brief pause. He too seems to be avoiding looking straight at her, but Donna hears the olive branch in this comment. It’s not an apology but it’s something.

Tucking her hair back behind her ear, Donna looks at him properly this time. Josh looks back at her, rocking back on his heels, hand in his pockets; a familiar anxious posture. For a moment neither of them speaks.

Then Donna says all in a rush, “I shouldn’t have walked out on you the way I did,”

At precisely the same moment that Josh blurts, “You were way more to me than a secretary or a short order cook,”

They blink at each other, startled, and then, in unison, say, “You go first,” a beat and again in unison, “Sorry,”

Donna steeples her fingers and presses them to her mouth, “Oh my God, we’re a bad sitcom,”

And for some reason this is precisely the right thing to say because suddenly they are both laughing. Was her comment really funny enough to warrant this outburst? No. Are they both probably slightly hysterical? Almost certainly. But it’s been so long since she’s laughed, properly _laughed_ , with Josh, that Donna doesn’t care. And when they finally calm down the air is lighter, like someone just pulled an old heavy curtain off a window and found it sunny outside.

Donna takes a deep breath, steadies herself and says, “I’m not sorry I quit. I needed to quit. But it didn’t go the way I meant it to. I never meant for it to…hurt… so much,”

“I know,” Josh says, and whether he actually did know before right that moment doesn’t really matter because for the first time in months he’s not looking at her in that horrible wounded way. He clears his throat, “It was never about keeping you my assistant forever. I knew I couldn’t deep down. I was just…I didn’t want to talk to you about your career because I thought I was going to lose my, you know, my friend,”

Donna presses her mouth into a straight line. _Don’t cry_ , she tells herself, “I know,” and whether _she_ actually did know before right that moment doesn’t really matter either.

“Screwed that up pretty bad,” Josh adds, dropping his chin to his chest and looking up at her through his eyelashes, the way he does when he’s desperately uncomfortable, “Lost you anyway,”

“No,” Donna shakes her head, exasperated, because on this front he has always, always been wrong, “I was mad at you and you were mad at me and neither of us knew how to fix it. But you didn’t lose me. You just thought you did,”

Josh smiles then, not her favourite smile, the one that’s been embedded in her heart since practically forever, but something approaching it. He takes one hand out of his pocket and touches it gently to the small of her back, like this is a place his body remembers to go, “Welcome back Donnatella,”

Donna leans back slightly, into the touch, and grins, knowing that what he really means is welcome _home_.

**~**

The first person that Josh runs into that morning is Donna. Usually this is great, usually a morning where he sees Donna before he sees anyone else is his favourite type of morning. But also it’s usually not the morning after the day he accidentally-on-purpose kissed her in his hotel room and she definitely on-purpose tried to give him the key to _her_ hotel room. So Josh thinks he should be forgiven for the fact that his greeting is less words than an odd high-pitched whining sound in the vague shape of words, like, “Hhhheeyyyyygoodmorningggg?”

“Good Morning,” Donna says, completely absurdly casual, like she always is. Like he didn’t just make a basically inhuman noise at her, like she didn’t indicate that she’d like to have _sex_ (Josh’s brain seems to snag a bit on this word) with him less than twelve hours ago. All through yesterday she was perfectly poised in a way Josh can’t even fathom let alone attempt to replicate and he wishes she’d at least blush a little or _something_ because he’s completely freaking out and… “You’re freaking out aren’t you?”

Josh nearly swallows his tongue. He knows Donna can basically read his mind, but that doesn’t mean he has to _like_ it, “No! No, no, noooooo, I’m good, I’m totally… you know,” he swallows, hard, “Good,”

Donna gives him a long look, like she’s weighing her options about what to say to him. And even though her face stays carefully neutral, there, _right there_ , is a tiny little flick of her eyes to the floor and back again and that’s how Josh knows that she is also freaking out, just doing a much, _much_ better job of hiding it. “Did I… I don’t want you to…” Donna has to stop and reset her shoulders, “If I was too…”

“No,” Josh interrupts her. This tiny evidence that Donna is not nearly as calm about this whole thing as she seems to be makes something inside him, something previously rioting around in a panic, go quiet, “No, it’s fine, don’t worry. I just… wasn’t fast enough,”

“Okay,” Donna clears her throat. She is, he thinks, just a little bit pink around the edges, “Well… let’s go get breakfast,” she heads for the elevator a bit faster than she needs to, remains silent for the ride down to the ground floor but then, as the doors open and she steps off and away from him, adds, “But next time Joshua, just knock on my door, kay?”

“Unnnhmmmm,” Josh gulps, hearing only the words ‘next time’ and nothing else.

**~**

Donna is a little afraid that she’s broken Josh. She hasn’t seen him in hours, but she has seen person after person – Sam, the President-Elect, Ronna, Lou, Edie, you name it they’ve spoken to her – asking whether or not Josh is okay. And every time she gets this question, Donna remembers how burnt out he’s been and then remembers that to help this, apparently, she decided to give him a deadline on figuring out their relationship.

She knows, somewhere deep down, that it was the right call. That she can’t just wait around for Josh to figure things out like she did for eight years previous because if she does then she’ll never stop waiting. He’s useless when it comes to this sort of thing and she knows that. Years ago Josh had read out loud to her from a ridiculous book about owning yourself or something equally stupid and there had been a line about how “it’s good to be trapped in a corner because that’s when you act,” and though the book had been a joke, that part had been true and so Donna has trapped Josh in a corner.

The problem is, so has half the known universe, so now she’s a little afraid that she’s broken him.

She’s busy worrying over this, debating whether the right move is to call him or give him space for today, when Josh materializes like a wraith in the doorway. Donna takes in his facial expression and feels her heart stop. He looks like death warmed over.

He also looks terrified, and now Donna is terrified because she’s suddenly positive that what he’s come to tell her is bad news. That she’s pushed too hard and his already tenuous grasp on romantic relationships has slipped completely and he just can’t get a handle on any part of his life and so he’s going to cut free the easiest thing to cut free, which is to say her.

Donna braces for impact as Josh approaches her desk, already resigning herself to a devastating loss. He stops, looks at her, sighs heavily in apparent dread and then says, “So I have two tickets to Hawaii here,”

The words do not make even a shred of sense to her ears, “You…what?”

“I have been given an ultimatum that I take a break or I lose my Deputy Chief of Staff, and you have given me an ultimatum that I figure out …. This,” Josh flaps a hand between them, “And so I have purchased two tickets to Hawaii,” he places said tickets on the desktop and gently pushes them towards her, “Maui. To be exact,”

Brain still scrambling to catch up to this unexpected turn in events, Donna blinks stupidly at him for long enough that he starts to fidget and then, finally, manages to say, “Oh my God, this is the unspecified point in the future,” in a small voice she doesn’t recognize as her own.

Josh grimaces and runs a hand through his hair, “Yeah,” he exhales through his nose and shoots her a desperate sort of look, somewhere between hope and utter exhaustion, “It’s just… I’ve been barreling towards all this for a year and now it’s here and I… Leo was supposed to be around to help and he’s gone, and Toby’s going to, like, prison maybe and Sam’s head is still half in California and CJ is busy fielding job offers and none of the people I was counting on to help me sort through all of this have the emotional or mental bandwidth to do it right now,”

“Josh…” Donna begins, half rising from her chair.

“I have no idea what I’m doing, “Josh continues, like she hasn’t spoken, “I’m sure of literally nothing. Except,” and here he pauses and shoots her a look so panic-stricken it makes Donna’s throat ache, “Except I’m sure that the year I spent without you was the worst year of my entire life, which is really, honestly saying something,” he stops, and presses the knuckles of one hand to his forehead and squeezes his eyes closed, “So yes, I am asking you to go to Hawaii with me, because I’m really hoping that’s something close to what you need. And if it’s not, if you need me to say or do something else, please God tell me because if I screw this up again and you leave, I’ll probably pretty much die,”

Donna, still poised half in and half out of her seat, continues to blink stupidly because so far that’s been working for her, and makes a tiny little noise along the lines of, “Eep,” but with less consonants.

Josh, who looks like he might probably pretty much die right then anyway, gives a weak laugh, “I’m really gonna need you to say something here because I’m kind of having a…”

But he never gets to say what he’s kind of having because the next moment a projectile in the shape of Donna Moss has launched herself practically over her desk, grabbed his face in both hands, and kissed him as thoroughly as she can manage to kiss him. Josh, for his part, seems to take this in the spirit intended, because after a moment of being too startled to react, he wraps his arms around her like he never plans to let her go. Which is, really, all Donna ever wanted in the first place.

**~**

Two days before Matt Santos is Inaugurated, Donna brings home three boxes from her storage unit and leaves them stacked in the front hall. They’re for her new office – a place that Donna has yet to see, but that Josh saw in a previous incarnation and refuses to tell her about except to hint that three boxes will not be nearly enough to fill it. Two are unmarked banker’s boxes that Donna claims are the remnants of her previous desk (“I considered burning them at one point,” she’s joked because they are able to joke about this now, “But then figured I could use the post-it notes,”), but it’s the last one that’s caught Josh’s interest.

The third box is marked: “ _TJB_ \- _memories, mementos and treasured things_ ”

Donna has taped this box within an inch of its life, slapped at least a dozen fragile stickers on it, and Josh has no idea what objects might be so treasured that she’s taken this amount of care to protect them but he’s dying to find out. And finally, when Donna catches him staring at for about the twentieth time that evening, she says, in a would-be casual voice, “I should open that one actually. There’s something I want to take out of it,”

Josh tries not to act too interested, but gives up once she’s got the box settled on the couch between them and begins hacking through the tape, “Important stuff in there, huh?”

“Yes,” Donna grins at him, a mischievous look in her eyes, and then lifts the lid, retrieves the top-most object from the box and hands it to him, without even looking to see what it is, like she has the shape and feel of the objects inside memorized.

It’s wrapped in at least ten layers of bubble wrap, but when Josh manages to free the item in his hands and look at it properly, his breath hitches. He’s holding a picture frame, one of those double ones that fold closed like a book. The photographs inside are both of him and Donna, each taken at an inaugural ball, four years apart. He remembers the second one clearly – Donna in her dark blue dress, hair curling around her face – but the first one seems like something from a different life. They are impossibly young, fresh faced and oblivious to anything that’s going to happen later. In the photo, Donna, in red, beams, not at the camera, but up into his face.

Each object in the box is like this; packaged up like a priceless artifact marking the progress of their intertwined lives. There’s a book on alpine skiing with a note in the front, a pen that once wrote the ‘H’ in a name on a peace treaty, a miniature Canadian flag, a charm bracelet (Donna takes this back with a smile, “I can probably wear this now without it being weird,”), a series of cards left in flowers given mostly in April until he switched and started giving them in February after she told him about a car accident and not stopping for red lights.

“It’s the Josh Box,” Donna explains, a bit sheepish. She taps the label on the lid, “I started calling it that in my head when I was packing, and it stuck,”

Josh clears his throat once, twice, trying to dislodge the lump that’s formed there and finally manages to ask, “What did you want to take out?”

Without looking Donna says, “It’s in the bottom. Square, about this big,” she gestures with her hands, “I thought maybe that one we should hang up here,” she says this casually, but Josh can hear the weight behind the suggestion, “It kind of belongs to both of us,”

Raising an eyebrow, he retrieves the item she’s indicated, unwraps it and then stares and stares and stares until finally he looks up at Donna, unsure whether he should laugh or cry or kiss her stupid, “You framed it,” he says.

Donna smiles, a shy sort of smile, and for half an instant she looks exactly like she did the day he handed her this, the day she told him he might find her valuable, “I said was going to,” she replies, holding her hands out. Josh places the frame into her outstretched palms. She touches the glass, tracing the words ‘Bartlet for America’ with one fingernail, “This was the first thing you ever gave me,” she says, “It changed my whole life,”

Josh reaches out and touches, not the frame, but her hand. His Donna, his most treasured thing, “Mine too,”

**~**

“What am I eating right now?”

Donna glances down into her bowl, then back up at Josh who has stuffed two spoonfuls into his mouth before asking this question, “It’s box mac and cheese with ground beef,”

Josh pulls a face but consumes another mouthful, “That’s disgusting,”

“Yes, but also weirdly comforting,” Donna agrees, nibbling at her own food, “I used to make it in college when I was particularly stressed out,”

“Are you particularly stressed out?” Josh asks, and Donna smiles because he’s so clearly exhausted but still managing to worry about her.

Donna shakes her head, “No. But I hear _you_ might be,”

Wincing, Josh swallows, puts his bowl down, and digs a knuckle into his left eyebrow, “Oh my God, it made it all the way to the East Wing?”

Giving her pasta a stir, Donna tucks one leg up on the couch and shifts towards him slightly, “Well, I mean my boss is married to your boss so…”

This looks like the worst news Josh has ever heard. He sinks backwards into the cushions and covers his face with both hands, “It wasn’t that bad,” he says, despite the fact that is body language is saying precisely the opposite.

“Ronna said she could hear you two yelling from her desk,”

Josh peers sideways at her through his fingers, “You said the First Lady told you,”

“She did. And then Ronna phoned and told me as well,”

“Oh my God,”

“Josh,” Donna puts her bowl down and nudges him with her foot, “Tell me what happened,”

It takes a minute, but finally, Josh sits up, then leans forward with his elbows on his knees, “It’s the China thing. The President thinks we should make the first move. I say pull back. We’ve done all the heavy lifting up to this point, it’s time for them to pull their weight. We keep going to them first, we look desperate,”

Donna nods, “Are you right?”

Josh looks at her, then away again, “Yes,”

“Well then,” Donna replies as though this settles it, “President Santos isn’t stupid. He’ll come around,” when Josh doesn’t reply, just continues staring off into the middle distance, Donna scoots over beside him, adopts his same posture, “What else is bugging you?”

Josh sighs and doesn’t immediately answer. Donna waits. After a minute or two he says, “He doesn’t trust me,”

Donna makes an incredulous noise, “Don’t be dumb,”

“ _Donna_ , I’m not. He doesn’t trust me,” Josh insists. He looks down at his hands, “I keep thinking about how President Bartlet was with Leo,”

“You should stop doing that,” Donna says. Off of the look Josh gives her she bumps him with her shoulder, “I’m serious Josh. Bartlet and Leo were friends for _years_ before he ever even ran for President. Their relationship was completely different to you and President Santos. You plucked him out of congress – from where he was thinking of retiring I might add – less than two years ago and now he’s the President of the United States. That’s a lot. He trusted you enough to get him there, but it’s still a lot. You have to give him time to adjust just like all of us need time to adjust, Jesus, I have an argument with the First Lady like once a day because the truth is we’re all still feeling this out,” she bumps him again a little harder this time, “Matt Santos isn’t Jed Bartlet. Stop expecting him to be,”

Josh slumps a bit, nods in agreement, “And I am _not_ Leo McGarry,”

Donna frowns, grabs him by the chin and turns him to look at her, “No,” she says sternly, “You’re Josh Lyman. And that’s not nothing,” The look he gives her breaks her heart, gratitude and uncertainty and something so, so close to that one word that neither of them have said yet, but that swells in her chest every time she looks at him. Donna relaxes her grip on him, raises her other hand so his face is cupped between them, “It’s always been enough for me,”

Josh smiles, a soft new smile, one she’s only started to see lately, one that takes her breath away, “Yeah, but _you’re_ nuts,”

“True,” Donna says, leaning in closer, knowing that the more she invades his personal space, the more likely that they are not going to get much sleep that night, “But I know what I’m talking about. If you hadn’t noticed, these days, I’m kind of a big deal,”

“Okay hot shot,” Josh says, and closes what little space remains between them.

**~**

The morning that it happens, Josh wakes up to an empty bed and the smell of coffee brewing. In the kitchen he finds Donna, standing at the counter humming something indistinguishable over the quiet sounds of CNN coming from the little television that sits on the microwave while she stirs some granola into a bowl of yogurt.

She looks like she always looks in the morning, in her polka dot pajama shorts and a grey sweatshirt so big that she’s had to roll the sleeves three times to use her hands. She’s wearing a pair of chunky knit socks because her feet are always cold, and she slides rather than walks to the fridge to get some fruit for her meal.

“Good morning,” Donna says, as she spots him. She nudges the fridge door closed with her elbow and slides back over to her bowl, “Your breakfast is on the table. I got those bagels you like. From the guy on the corner,”

And Josh has no idea why this is the moment that it happens, has no idea why it strikes him right then out of nowhere – a bolt from the blue as they say – but suddenly he finds he can’t stop staring at her. Donna who has returned to her yogurt, retrieved her own coffee mug and gone to sit down, suddenly notices him frozen in place in the doorway and freezes herself, half on and half off of her stool, “Hello? Earth to Joshua?”

“Sorry,” Josh sits across from her, but the feeling doesn’t leave. He’s still transfixed by her face. Her hair is half falling in her eyes and half held up into a post-sleep bird’s nest by a bright blue scrunchy, she’s got racoon smudges under her eyes from where she didn’t manage to get her mascara fully off before she went to bed, a mouthful of yogurt and granola and is staring at him like he’s got six heads, but he simply can’t look away from her face.

Donna swallows and dabs her mouth self-consciously with the edge of her sleeve, “What’s happening right now? What are you thinking?”

What he’s thinking is that she’s the most beautiful person he’s ever known, inside and outside. He’s thinking that the quality of his life improves just by her being in the room. He’s thinking that there isn’t one moment over the last eight and a half years that he doesn’t somehow reference off of the presence of Donna Moss. She’s like home free in a game of tag, the safe place he keeps coming back to no matter how far he runs away. The rock he anchors himself to, has always anchored himself to. And he’s thinking that it’s insane that he’s never told her this, that he’s never actually just said what he feels.

Except that’s not quite right, is it? In fact, Josh thinks, looking back, they’ve said it plenty. If you knew where to look and what to listen for, he and Donna have been telling each other how they feel for years.

Just maybe not in so many words. And maybe it’s time one of them said those words.

Josh grins at her, at her look of complete confusion, reaches out to brush her hair away from her eyes, and says, finally, finally, _finally_ , “I’m thinking that I love you,”

And Donna blinks, once, twice, three times.

And then she smiles.

And it’s just like the sun coming up.

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, if you just finished this whole big thing, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading. This began as a collection of half-formed fics and one liners that I Frankensteined into the story above after realized that they all were about the same thing: saying I love you without actually saying I love you.
> 
> Thanks to TWW fandom folks on Tumblr for indulging in my frequent ramblings about the writing process for this fic. Y'all are awesome.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed and thank you for reading!


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